Top 80 Adam Kokesh Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “We will not be silent. We will not obey. We will not allow our government to destroy our humanity.”

— Adam Kokesh

2. “The current global paradigm of social organization is statism. Statism is based on a central authority, rule by force, and subservience to the collective or ruling class. It is coming to an end as we wake up to a new freedom paradigm based on human rights, nonviolence, and self-ownership. This transition from the paradigm of statism to the paradigm of freedom is the most important paradigm shift in human history.”

— Adam Kokesh

3. “Anything less than self-ownership is slavery. All concepts of rights come from self-ownership. Your self-ownership is the acknowledgement by others of your right to control yourself. If you do not assert control over something of value, someone else will. Without the assertion of self-ownership, there is no freedom.”

— Adam Kokesh

4. “Freedom is the ability to exercise your will within your rights without the threat of force from anyone else.”

— Adam Kokesh

5. “A government that controls education will never teach us to stand up for our rights. A government that is responsible for the development of young minds will teach them what to think, not how to think. A government that can control what we know, and what we don’t know, can control what we do. Government schools will never teach an alternative to blind allegiance. The consequences of government education are far-reaching, profound, and compounded with each generation.”

— Adam Kokesh

6. “Most governments have passed so many laws that if they want to go after someone who challenges their power, refuses to be exploited, or represents a political inconvenience, it’s not difficult to come up with a legal excuse to detain, charge, try, and sentence them.”

— Adam Kokesh

7. “A society that rewards people for violence will get more violence. A society that tolerates people who violate the non-aggression principle will be ruled by aggressive people. A society that believes aggression is necessary in order to function will institutionalize coercion and reward those who provide what it considers necessary.”

— Adam Kokesh

8. “One assumption of the drug war is that some drugs are illegal because they are dangerous or unhealthy. In other words, because doing drugs might ruin your life, if you’re caught with them, the government will ruin your life.”

— Adam Kokesh

9. “Dispute resolution is too important to be entrusted to governments. When we accept arbitrary authority from a violent monopoly protection racket, the authority is soon used to make us submit. Then that authority is for sale to the highest bidder and courts are used to get us to go along with all kinds of disastrous policies.”

— Adam Kokesh

10. “The greatest weapon against tyranny is a mind that refuses to submit to manipulation. If we want to be warriors for truth, soldiers for justice, and champions of freedom, we must first attain the discipline of happiness and a great capacity for living in love. Be the master of your own mind. Choose your demeanor at all times. Never meet a fellow person with force or coercion. Strive to live by reason. Smile because you’re alive. Remember, HAPPINESS is the ultimate act of defiance.”

— Adam Kokesh

11. “We deserve self-rule. We deserve to be in charge of our own lives. No one has the right to control others by force, even if they claim to have the majority behind them.”

— Adam Kokesh

12. “Taxation is an inescapable part of the government racket. If governments never stole, they would cease to be governments. If we could withdraw our financial support from them at any time, they would be voluntary cooperatives, or service providers. Because taxation is backed up with the threat of force, it is theft, plain and simple.”

— Adam Kokesh

13. “Once a government has developed a strong sense of national identity and patriotism among its citizens, it is not particularly difficult to convince a large number of them to sign up to defend the collective. This is still true for governments with consistent records of sending people to kill and die in ways that clearly have nothing to do with defense. But being called a soldier does not separate you from responsibility for your actions.”

— Adam Kokesh

14. “Forced education indoctrinates children with government values. It is much easier to convince young people to join the military and kill strangers if they have been “taught” that this is glorious. Governments also benefit from being able to keep certain knowledge away from students.”

— Adam Kokesh

15. “It is not right for one person to steal. It is not right for two people to steal. It is still not right for 51% of a voting population to vote for a representative who will hire a tax collector to steal for them. One of the great government lies is that theft can be moral when performed by enough people and called taxation.”

— Adam Kokesh

16. “For the paradigm shift to occur, it has to be embraced by a critical mass of people. We are rapidly approaching the tipping point at which statism will be untenable, not just because the institutions are unsustainable, but because we are rising up and demanding our rights.”

— Adam Kokesh

17. “A protection racket cannot claim to have a moral foundation. Justice is far too important to be trusted to government. In many ways, we have become dependent on government, so in the transition to a free society, many peaceful systems of justice will first resemble current government models and meet current expectations. However, with the innovation made possible in the absence of coercion, those expectations will soon be exceeded with far more righteous and efficient systems of justice.”

— Adam Kokesh

18. “Should one whole year from this July 4th pass while the crimes of this government are allowed to continue, we may have passed the point at which non-violent revolution becomes impossible.”

— Adam Kokesh

19. “Fortunately, the same technology that makes propaganda possible today has finally caught up in terms of empowering us to question government, and we may have already passed the high point of the effectiveness of propaganda.”

— Adam Kokesh

20. “Theft is when someone takes something that doesn’t belong to them. Either governments own “their people” as slaves, or taxation is theft. You own yourself. Therefore, taxation is theft. Because you own your body, your labor, and what you acquire by trade, taxation is theft.”

— Adam Kokesh

21. “Government apologists claim it’s acceptable for a government to do something that an individual would never be allowed to do.”

— Adam Kokesh

22. “The current extent of surveillance clearly shows there is another motive besides catching bad guys. Government surveillance is not about keeping us safe. It’s about keeping us under control.”

— Adam Kokesh

23. “Locking someone in a cage for doing something you just don’t like makes you the criminal. Sometimes individual acts of incarceration are justified, but modern prison systems contain mostly people whose incarceration itself is a crime. Even for its stated objectives, a punitive prison system is a dangerous and ineffective tool.”

— Adam Kokesh

24. “Trusting governments to “fight terror” invites massive corruption. If we ask someone to fight imaginary demons for us and decide how much it will cost, we will soon find ourselves in a world full of demons that are very expensive to fight.”

— Adam Kokesh

25. “Patriotism is an artificial, bordered “love” designed to create a distinct lack of love for those on the other side of the borders.”

— Adam Kokesh

26. “The propaganda techniques are so sophisticated, governments have convinced people to attack anyone who points out the uncomfortable truth.”

— Adam Kokesh

27. “The way most of us understand freedom and happiness is backwards. Happiness is not the result of freedom. Happiness causes freedom! Do we need freedom to be happy? Most certainly not! Happiness is not pursued, captured, beaten over the head with a club, and hauled home to be enjoyed for ever and ever!”

— Adam Kokesh

28. “If the worst crime that can be committed against an individual is murder, then the worst possible crime is organized, deliberate, self-righteous, mass murder. “War” is just a word that governments use to make mass murder and theft seem acceptable.”

— Adam Kokesh

29. “When foreign aid is disbursed based on where there is terrorism, starvation, or disease, it ends up subsidizing terrorism, starvation, and disease.”

— Adam Kokesh

30. “To make a society support the crazy ideas behind war, governments need to instill an intense sense of collective identity, which is in itself an affront to freedom.”

— Adam Kokesh

31. “The freedom movement is not a political movement. It is an anti-political movement! A truly happy person can appeal to the better nature of fellow human beings, can meet them with peace and persuasion and displace coercion with voluntary relationships and self-government based on self-ownership.”

— Adam Kokesh

32. “While not considered war by some, embargoes and blockades represent widespread threats of force, and can be just as destructive as war.”

— Adam Kokesh

33. “Education of others starts with education of ourselves. To be advocates for freedom, we don’t need to be academic experts, but it helps to have a complete grasp of the message. It helps to have a thorough understanding of how statism affects those around us.”

— Adam Kokesh

34. “Religion has long played a supporting role in oppression, as governments will promote religions that advocate obedience to government.”

— Adam Kokesh

35. “Statism is the ideology of turning to organized force to solve problems better solved through peaceful persuasion.”

— Adam Kokesh

36. “Statism is the dominant paradigm today because most of us are in denial or ignorant of its true nature.”

— Adam Kokesh

37. “Although war spending is clearly a way of diverting productive resources to destructive purposes, governments always count this spending in positive economic measurements to perpetuate the most dangerous myth that war is good for the economy.”

— Adam Kokesh

38. “Creating money and forcing us to accept it is worse than stealing because it attempts to hide how badly we are getting cheated.”

— Adam Kokesh

39. “The great illusion of the current paradigm of statism is that governments achieve a worthwhile reduction of violence. Governments are the greatest cause of violence in the world today. They are coercive monopolies with only an illusion of public support. Everything they do is based on a presumed right to point guns at people who are acting peacefully.”

— Adam Kokesh

40. “The more a government seeks control over its citizens, the more it needs to spy on them. All government surveillance is wrong, but it is especially wrong when the property rights and privacy of citizens are violated.”

— Adam Kokesh

41. “Governments have used gun control whenever they want to make people more dependent, but especially when they need to tighten control over society. Some of the most vicious government atrocities ever committed were preceded by strict gun control.”

— Adam Kokesh

42. “When a tax is imposed on a population, it means a large chunk of the wealth is no longer allowed to serve the needs of the people who earned it, but rather the needs of government.”

— Adam Kokesh

43. “None of the propaganda around war can disguise its true nature. It is massive organized violence for the purpose of expanding government power. It is the height of statism and it is the greatest affront to freedom.”

— Adam Kokesh

44. “Governments are not protection, they are protection rackets. National security is an excuse to defend exclusive taxation authority in their territory. Governments protect us like a rancher defends cattle. At home as abroad, governments use violence to expand their power.”

— Adam Kokesh

45. “Patriotism is proof that a patriot isn’t free.”

— Adam Kokesh

46. “Turning to government for protection from thieves says, “My neighbor might steal from me, so I’ll trust a government to steal from everyone so if my neighbor steals from me, he might be locked in a cage for a while.”

— Adam Kokesh

47. “Police officers are routinely called to testify against defendants, and courts try to make people think they are protected from false testimony, but police are routinely allowed to lie.”

— Adam Kokesh

48. “When governments take over education, young minds suffer. The exploitation of the education racket is particularly vicious because to miseducate or under-educate a child is to cripple their future. Young minds naturally absorb information and seek the skills most essential to their happiness and prosperity. Threatening young people with consequences to ensure obedience stifles free-thinking and teaches the way of government: to accept rule by force.”

— Adam Kokesh

49. “Sales taxes are just as much theft as any other taxes, even though everyone chooses to pay them as they make consumer choices. A sales tax is simply conditional theft, just like import taxes or any other taxes on trade.”

— Adam Kokesh

50. “The history of government has been defined by two arcs: the development of our capacity to tolerate theft, and our awareness that we deserve to live without being robbed.”

— Adam Kokesh